Cambodia

Among the 29 countries and economies of the East Asia and Pacific region, one finds some of the world’s most successful education systems. Seven out of the top 10 highest average scorers on internationally comparable tests such as PISA and TIMSS are from the region, with Japan, Republic of Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong (China) consistently among the best.

But, more significantly, one also finds that great performance is not limited to school systems in the region’s high-income countries. School systems in middle-income Vietnam and China (specifically the provinces of Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Guangdong) score better than the average OECD country, despite having much lower GDP per capita. What is more, scores from both China and Vietnam show that poor students are not being left behind. Students from the second-lowest income quintile score better than the average OECD student, and even the very poorest test takers outscore students from some wealthy countries. As the graph below shows, however, other countries in the region have yet to achieve similar results.

On March 8, 2016, on the occasion of International Women’s Day, Habitat for Humanity International launched its first global advocacy campaign, “Solid Ground,” which envisions a world where everyone has access to land for shelter. Promoting gender equality and addressing inequitable or unenforced laws, policies, and customary practices affecting women’s rights to security of tenure and inheritance, has been a primary focus of the campaign.

Now mid-way through the campaign, Solid Ground has grown to include 37 national Habitat for Humanity organizations, 17 partner organizations, an active microsite solidgroundcampaign.org (and in Spanish, SueloUrbano.org), and has provided direct financial assistance to country programs working on gender and land issues. In its first year, over 1.3 million people are projected to have improved access to land for shelter through the Solid Ground campaign with a goal of reaching 10 million people, especially women.

The World Bank partnered with the Women’s Media Center “Let’s Talk Money” radio show to help build financial stability in Cambodia.

Risky financial behaviors among Cambodians of the post-millennial generation have become more widespread in the country, especially among the 18-35 age group. While they are important customers for the financial and banking sectors, their behaviors are often dominated by lavish spending and excessive borrowing.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development rightfully points out that sustainability has three dimensions: economic, environmental, and social. The first two are well understood and well measured.

Economic sustainability has a whole strand of literature and the World Bank and IMF devote a lot of attention to debt and fiscal sustainability in their reports. Just open any Article 4 consultation or any public expenditure review and you will find some form of fiscal or debt sustainability analysis.

The same can be said about environmental sustainability. Since Cancun (COP16), countries prepare National Adaptation Plans, and since COP 21, they have prepared Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) which focus on domestic mitigation measures to address climate change.

Eliminating inequality is integral to the Sustainable Development Goals , from ‘universal access’ to water, to ending poverty ‘everywhere’. Yet in a world where the politics of who gets what is increasingly polarised, leaving no-one behind is fundamentally a political project.

In a recent study with WaterAid in Nepal, for example, we found that in rural areas a combination of poverty, caste, and geography have shut the poorest fifth out of politics. While access to water has increased significantly for others, they are lagging behind.

Every city, country or district has its own political rules, most of which aren’t written down. Yet despite all this complexity, experts working on essential services like water, sanitation, health or education can avoid some common political missteps, wherever they work. Here are four most typical ones:

Assessments make a lot of people nervous, and I’m not just talking about the students who have to take them. As a psychometrician (assessment expert) and World Bank staffer, I’ve worked on assessment projects in more than 30 countries around the world over the past 10 years. Time and again, I’ve found great interest in student assessment as a tool for monitoring and supporting student learning coupled with great unease over how exactly to go about ‘doing’ an assessment.

The World Bank Group surveys its stakeholders from country governments, development organizations, civil society, private sector, academia, and media in all client countries across the globe. Building a dialogue with national governments and non-state partners based of the data received directly from them is an effective way to engage stakeholders in discussions in any development area at any possible level.

Let's take the education sector as an example to see how Country Survey data might influence the engagement that the Bank Group has on this highly prioritized area of work.

When Country Surveys ask what respondents identify as the greatest development priority in their country, overall, education is perceived as a top priority (31%, N=263) in India.1 However, in a large country, stakeholder opinions across geographic locations may differ, and the Country Survey data can be 'sliced and diced' to provide insight into stakeholders' opinions based on their geography, gender, level of collaboration with the Bank Group, etc. In India the data analyzed at the state level shows significant differences in stakeholder perceptions of the importance of education. The survey results can be used as a basis for further in-depth analyses of client's needs in education in different states and, therefore, lead to more targeted engagement on the ground. In the case of the India Country Survey, the Ns at the geographical level may be too small to reach specific conclusions, but this example illustrates the possibility for targeted analysis.

The city of Medellin has successfully implemented an integrated and multi-sector approach that has included a combination of violence prevention programs and a deep commitment of its people to build a prosperous, inclusive and livable city. For that reason, the experience of Medellin in integral urban transformation and social resilience attracts intense interest from other cities around the world.

This week (May 29 to June 2, 2017), representatives from more than 35 cities are in Medellin sharing different methodologies and experiences with respect to security, coexistence, and resilience. This “Medellin Lab” is the first living laboratory program in Colombia, organized by Medellin’s International Cooperation and Investment Agency (ACI), the World Bank, USAID, and the Rockefeller foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities network.

On a recent visit to provincial treasury offices to learn about the Financial Management Information Systems, or FMIS, that members of our Governance teams helped introduce, the conversation turned to cows.

Staff compared switching from manual pen-and-paper to an automated state-of-the-art public finance management system as akin to making a cow watch television. Cows, they explained, are as unfamiliar with television as some treasury staff are with computers, the internet, and FMIS.

Fortunately, the relevance of the analogy was short-lived. Treasury staff have overcome the learning curve and the new system has proven to be helpful. I consistently heard praise about the system’s usefulness because it provides useful financial information, reduces the amount of repetitive work, and generates timely reports. That is a big change.